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Russian Empire
Russian Empire The Russian Empire, also known as Imperial Russia or simply Russia, is a vast empire to the east of Europe that spans the lengths of Eurasia, joining Europe with Asia, making it the largest country in the world and third-largest empire in the world when the world map was again redrawn by the victorious Entente powers at the end of the Great War, 1918 in the Palace of Versailles. The country has since seen innumerable uprisings by communards, monarchists, anarchists and various independence movements which the State has always managed to put down by either peaceful negotiations, brute force and violence by calling in the Imperial Armed-Forces or stealth and subterfuge by mobilising the ever-watchful Okhrana secret police. The most vicious of such uprisings culminated in the Tsaritsyn Revolution, in which over 100,000 mutinous soldiers of the Army adorned themselves with red banners and seized the city and the surrounding area. The revolution was eventually put down on the 25th of December, 1933; leading many in the West to call it the Christmas Miracle after nearly one-and-a-half-million dead and the city in complete ruins (with major reconstruction work continuing into the 40's). The revolutions that continued to plague the empire slowly started dying down with each successive failure and by the 1940's, all want for change was quenched with each government reform which turned the autocratic State into a parliamentary semi-republic modelled after the realm of King-Emporer George V of Britain. The people are happy with the current state of affairs in the Empire and though Russia's past has featured many ups and downs; collapses and rises to new prominence, only to be knocked back down again - it somehow manages to soldier on in stoic Russian-fashion, seemingly just to spite the universe well into the 20th century thanks to the steady hand of the imperial House of Romanov; the most modern cadet branch being the Holstein-Gottorp which has reigned since Peter III's succession to the throne in 1762 with the House structure again being revised in 1950 to Ripley-Romanov with the marriage of Marcel David-Alois Ripley to Olga Nicolaevna; eldest daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II. History When Russia entered the Great War, she was woefully unprepared for the carnage of a modern, industrialised war and suffered horrendously in face of continuous Central Powers onslaught, being able to do nothing but batter their bodies into the opposing warmachine in hopes that they'd run the opposition dry of manpower and these constant failures led to the collapse of the government by 1917 when the Provisional Government meant tot replace the Imperial one fell to Bolshevik forces who they'd unwisely armed to repel Imperial forces wishing to seize Petrograd and restore the autocratic rule of the Tsar. The newly formed Russia immediately set its mind on expanding the world revolution and so attempted to stall for time; hoping that the unrest building up in Germany too, would spill over into another victory for the socialists. Kaiser Wilhelm, on the other hand, had no time for such stubborn stupidity from the Lenin, who he had put into power, and ordered the German army to resume its advances into Russia, sweeping aside any opposing forces with relative ease, as the nation was now in a struggle between the Bolsheviks who sought to resume control, the Whites who could be categorised as mainly wanting to restore the Provisional and/or Imperial governments and the many different independence movements against both states and each other. Lenin eventually agreed to the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, as the Red Army was fighting on all sides and was in very real danger of being crushed by the united forces of Alexander Kolchak, the Germans and their own men turning tail after a long series of counter-revolutions broke out in Soviet territory. The Germans set up a series of puppet states and withdrew the bulk of its forces to deal with the Western Front and that meant that the Bolsheviks could use those freed divisions to fight the White Movement and launched a series of offensives that bloodied the Whites badly and it seemed as if they would lose the war, were it not for the re-emergence of Nicholas II who took the helm of the army and lead it personally. The reappearance of the Tsar awed the masses and terrified the Bolsheviks, who now had lost all interest in fighting the Tsar Who Could Not Be Killed. That combined with the successful assassinations of Trotsky and Stalin led to the gradual, but total collapse of the Red Army; the last battle being at the gates of Moscow on 1 Feb. 1922 when Russian tanks supported the reformed Preobrazhensky Regiment in penetrating the Bolshevik lines and continued battering their heads against bloody opposition until the Kremlin itself had fallen. Hearing of this news, the surviving Bolshevik soldiers surrendered after having learned that Lenin had already boarded a train that was stormed by the Guards. Lenin himself was dragged out onto the platform and ripped to pieces with bayonets, fists and rocks and paraded around the city before being hung-up from the Kremlin Clock Tower in the image of the crucified Christ; the badge of the regiment. The government was restored and Nicholas wasted no time in fulfilling his promises of reform for the people and he personally attended the Versailles Conference where he battled out his own views with the foreign delegates; wanting less strict sanctions on Germany (who the Imperial Army was helping to restore the monarchy in the Kapp Putsch), reintegration of most of its freed subjects (which Woodrow Wilson vehemently detested when the Russians disregarded US threats of intervention and annexed the territories regardless) with the exception of Georgia, which was formed into a Russian puppet, Poland which was released and compensated with Lithuania to restore the commonwealth. He also demanded Russia's share of the Germany colonies, which would be severely reduced, though not dismantled completely and for the creation of an economic bloc in Europe to prevent another Great War from breaking out again. All delegates agreed (mostly), except for the Americans, who felt betrayed by their European allies and pulled out of any further negotiations and started their slow descent back into isolationism. As the world had to find its feet once more, so did Russia and she wasted no time in modernising and drafting the 1924 constitution which legitimised the Duma and allowed for free elections (though the Tsar still had supreme authority to overturn any bills which all had to pass by him first) and was instrumental in pioneering the aforementioned bloc which would become the European Commonwealth which helped the participants of the war recover quickly and helped soothe tensions between former enemies . Russia Nicholas modelled himself after the example of his British cousin-in-law George V and launched a publicity campaign showing him to be visiting factories and workshops. He toured the vast empire which he had restructured from the-ground-up and made radio announcements to the public on national holidays to boost his charismatic charm over the nation's people and it was during one of these state visits to the first Russo-Ford factory set up to manufacture license-built American Ford models to aid the local economy and help motorise the masses with affordable and rugged vehicles that a whole regiment of armed and angry soldiers, workers, peasants and farmers would rise up after a female communard had sung the Internationale in front of a police blockade and was beaten by a stout Orthodox priest and would storm the factory and engaging the Tsar's personal Cossack bodyguard. He would narrowly escape said attack (coming as close as twenty feet by some accounts to Ilya Mouromets; a socialist hero of the first revolution who went by the name of the Russian mythic hero and would have shot the Tsar down with a stolen Federov, had the Tsar not returned fire with his Nagant revolver and grazed his arm on the factory floor, before being ushered into his armoured car and driven to Kamyshin and then onto Saratov after rumours of communard forces in the area) The communards, who found themselves quite surprised by the fact that they had unintentionally sparked a regional revolution of such numbers, were slow to act upon the moment and only managed to secure up to Antipovka (which allowed the Tsar to escape) and just managed to dig in hasty defences and get a line ordered into battle by the time the first of the Imperial Russian Army responses started appearing at 02:30 6th March; being the Don Kuban host of Cossacks who had immediately mobilised and ridden out after hearing of the uprising and engaged communard forces at the village of Solyanka, were they were repelled by timely intervention of mortar-fire (Tsaritsyn had become a major tank and car manufactory in the post-war years and housed large stocks of the Army's surplus rifles, artillery, munitions and some planes) and suffered heavy casualties. They pulled back to a nearby village, where the Sevastopol Regiment met them and told them what was happening: the Tsar would set up his field base at Saratov and ordered all units in the area to regroup there, where he would draw his own line of defensive lines which would hold the communards back until more reinforcements arrived at Saratov and he could start any meaningful offensive operations against the communard forces. Men and material would arrive and by April the Imperial forces would number 150,000 against 135,000 communards and the first offensive started against communard forces in the forest of Solodcha. The communards had chosen their ground well and the forest obstructed any artillery fire or armoured support and the infantry who had been drilled and equipped for combined-arms warfare were quickly repelled with heavy casualties. Geography Geographically-speaking Russia is gargantuan land built up over the many eons of warring with other nations and commands roughly 23,000,000 square kilometres (8,600,000 sq. mi), or 1/6 of the earths surface, yet still it comes in behind the Mongol Empire, which was bigger that it and had quite a colourful history with them. Yet both parties are overshadowed by the vast British Empire to the West which is dominates a quartet of the earth's surface and population. To the North it is bordered by Finland and Norway, to the East lies China, Mongolia and Japan, to the south Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, as well as the Russian protectorates of the Kingdom of Georgia and Byzantium and finally the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Romania to the West; sharing good relations with nearly all of its neighbours, save the Turks, who resent that their territory was broken up into various puppet states and Iran, who frequently find themselves on the butt-end of Britain and Russia's push-and-pull sessions and has a vested interest in breaking Russian monopolies in Iranian markets. Ethnically the empire had well over a hundred varying ethnicities, which ironically only a third of which is constituted by actual Russians Economy Economy-wise, the empire has a predominantly agricultural base; single-handedly exporting a third of the world's grain and cereal crops (so-much-so, in fact, that the government pays subsidiaries to farmers to not produce as much as they could, lest they drive the global price rates down and crash Russia's. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways and factories and launched a long series of industrialisation plans started by Nicholas II during his long reign and continued by his children so that by the present day, - though not to the same extent as Germany and Britain - Russia is a major competitor industrially. Russian industrial enterprises are everywhere to be found as her newly-gained colonies from the Versailles treaty expanded her platform from which to launch new ventures with foreign markets.